The Pulse Newsletter 📣 | This is The Athletic’s daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox.Good morning! Be inquisitive today. Coming up:
Questions: We’re calling that stat ‘OOPS’ nowWelcome to Pulse Mailbag week! I (Chris) am out on vacation, so we decided to take your questions and bring them to the experts … or me, if I could answer well. Today’s topic: rules, in a general sense.Your questions (lightly edited for clarity!), answered: Do umpires have a “home” city? A team they might work a bit more frequently so that they get to be home once in a while? Or are they on the road constantly? — Bob R., Minneapolis, Minn.💬 Jayson Stark: Bob, those answers are “no” (kind of) and “yes” (definitely). Here’s the way ump scheduling works: The league draws up schedules for all 19 crews. Then the crew chiefs pick their schedule in order of seniority. So longtime crew chiefs can make sure they get 3-6 series near home. But they also try to give the other umps on their crew a chance to get home. No matter how it works out, unlike all 30 teams, they won’t get close to 81 home games. So their suitcases are always packed!I’ve seen (as a Guards fan) José Ramírez send a bat flying out of his hands, maybe a dozen times or more, this season. Is there any tracking on this? If so, is there another record that he could break this season? — Mark S., Columbus, Ohio💬 Levi Weaver: The short answer: I haven’t seen it tracked.But have you seen those Google AI commercials that are like “batters who jumped over the foul line hit the ball four percent harder than those who didn’t”?They’re the worst. A whole ad campaign based on the premise “But what if correlation WAS causation … and we made none of the data publicly available?”How useless. But it means the data does exist! So, unfortunately, your best bet at getting an answer is probably my worst nightmare: more of those commercials. Sorry, Mark.I’ve been on this one-man quixotic crusade for a while now, but can we *please* start referring to the pitching statistic Opponent’s OPS as OOPS? It’s just sitting right there, and it *works*! (Currently known as OPS against.) — Ben L., Lancaster, Calif.
